Code visibility tool for enterprises untangles spaghetti code

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Modern code development consists of a complicated set of components, including different microservices running in different places. It’s a reality that is often referred to as “spaghetti code” given how tangled and intermingled the different strands of development can be.

In 2019, San Francisco-based CodeSee got started as an effort to help developers begin to untangle some of that spaghetti code using its code visibility platform. CodeSee’s technology first became publicly available in 2021, with a community edition that is freely available. An initial target for the company was to help open-source developers visualize how application code comes together. 

Today, CodeSee is moving upmarket with the launch of its CodeSee Enterprise platform. The goal with the new enterprise platform is to help organizations better understand their own internal codebases and improve development practices.

“With our enterprise version we’re adding an additional layer of visibility to visualize the service layer,” Shanea Leven, founder and CEO, told VentureBeat. “We’re also providing capabilities to automate an understanding of code, throughout the development process.”

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Code visibility: From open-source to the enterprise

Though CodeSee is not currently open source (but Leven has future plans to open source-license elements of CodeSee), it is having an impact on helping the open-source community.

“We wanted to understand and help developers contribute to open source and the biggest barrier to entry in almost any open-source project is onboarding and understanding the codebase,” Leven said. 

CodeSee’s effort to help better visualize and understand open-source code was originally known as OSS Port and has been rebranded as Open Source Hub. Leven explained that Open Source Hub is a free service where project maintainers can put open-source applications to get a map that provides a visualization of how the various components all fit together. The Open Source Hub also serves as a community resource to help provide educational materials and discussion around open-source projects.

The enterprise superset for code visibility

With its new enterprise edition, CodeSee is now providing additional capabilities that organizations need to help manage and better understand application code.

Among the capabilities are governance tools for identity and access controls, including single sign-on integration to allow for authorized access code repositories. There is also a capability to help organizations visualize code across an enterprise and how different components are connected.

Going a step further, CodeSee Enterprise introduces code automation capabilities. Leven explained that with the automations, for example anytime there is a file added or something changes in a codebase, there can be an alert generated with a series of recommended actions. The code automation alert can also include documentation on why the change requires the specific actions to take place.

In terms of code visibility sources, CodeSee provides direct integration with GitHub code repositories and has an extension for Microsoft’s VS code. CodeSee doesn’t yet have direct integration with Atlassian Jira or GitLab, which are also popular tools for developers, though Leven expects those integrations to come in the future.

“We integrate directly into the developer workflow and they don’t have to worry about going to other tools,” Leven said. “We will continue to have more integrations over time.”

Looking forward, CodeSee is also likely to add in machine learning-powered capabilities to do further code analysis in the future. as well as support for understanding infrastructure-as-code deployments such as Terraform.

“We’ve got a pretty big expansion that we’re working on to be able to ensure that our enterprise customers really get the information that they need,” Leven said. “Everybody has a different plate of spaghetti code and you never know how their code is going to look, and so there’s going to be some needs there that we have to address.” 

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